Nocked! is a Robin Hood RPG where you tell the story

Craft your own folklore hero in this giant text-based RPG!

Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood – a brand new roleplaying game that’s set to hit Steam next week – is a million words long. By that we don’t just mean “it’s quite a talky game with a lot of writing in it.” We mean: it’s a million words long.

If that sounds like your idea of hell, then perhaps it’s time to quickly move on – but for anyone interested in an engrossing and involving story that you meaningfully shape as you play, this could well be the game for you this Summer.

There’s a good reason for that word count. “It isn’t just long or wordy,” explains creator Andrew G. Schneider. “Choices have immediate impacts and cascading consequences two, three, four levels deep across the length and breadth of the game.”

Nocked! was initially released for iOS in 2017, where it was well received, but this is the definitive version – with brand new artwork and music, and plenty of additional content to bring the story together. Schneider’s goal with Nocked! is, in fact, not to tell a story per se, but to allow players to recreate the tale of folklore’s most heroic outlaw, shaping the character and their adventure in any way they please.

“Nocked!’s intent is not to tell a story of Robin Hood,” says Schneider, “but to allow the player to tell their story of Robin Hood. It branches enormously on a grand and granular level – the base you choose, the romances you pursue, the people you help and those you rob of every last penny – every choice changes the story in some small way, even as it’s unified by the passage of time.”

Schneider’s background is in writing and game design, but this is the first time he’s turned his talent to the digitised world. His dual character classes have always been novel-writing and tabletop games, but he’d always had a love of computer roleplaying games. One day, his wife suggested he try his hand at one. “‘It’ll be quick,’ she said,” Schneider recalls. “Six years later…”

But his background in the tabletop world also helped to shape Nocked! into the roleplaying experience it is. “I have a deep and abiding love for tabletop RPGs – the freedom of imagination, the joys of creating a story with your friends,” says Schneider. “It’s not the same with a video game, but I wanted to try and bottle some of that feeling and share it with a larger audience.”

Nocked! includes both RPG elements and strategic resource management, and the two are tightly intertwined, each helping the other move the story in (sometimes unexpected) directions. There are five backgrounds, for instance, and your choice of origin changes both your resource goals and your quest options.

“Robin Hood — man or woman, prince or pauper, regardless of sexual orientation — is always on the threshold of awesome,” says Schneider. “While there’s a lot of narrative character development, your character doesn’t statistically improve as you might expect from a traditional RPG. Instead, your narrative choices feed into a larger resource cycle — you gain power and influence, gold and renown, followers and the favour of factions across England. Spending resources then becomes the operative choice — build a park or an archery range, upgrade your base or ally with the peasants — that opens up more side quests, more stories, more rewards. The fiction informs the mechanics, and the story you create through your choices informs what you can accomplish with your resources.”

It’s also a game full of Schneider’s own personal touches. “You can get married, if you play your cards right,” he notes. “The wedding march that takes you down the aisle? That’s the march from my wedding, played by the same fiddler, Paul Carlson. And I’m over the moon that one of my favourite folk musicians, Jon Boden, lead singer of Bellowhead and the Remnant Kings, recorded an original song, Living in the Greenwood, specifically for this game. Meanwhile, the silhouette of Cook in the early game — that’s the artist herself.”

Schneider is not afraid to embrace the fact that Nocked! is a small production – the work of six people overall. “It shows that kind of artisan, individual creative vision, love, and care,” he says. “So, from the small handful of us who worked on it — and especially from me, who’s been working on this for six years: Thanks for reading and thanks for playing. Go to, Sherwood and your Robin awaits!”

Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood will be released for PC via Steam on 17th July 2019.